Evolutionary biology since Darwin has seen a dramatic entrenchment and elaboration of the role of chance in evolution. It is nearly impossible to discuss contemporary evolutionary theory in any depth ...
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Evolutionary biology since Darwin has seen a dramatic entrenchment and elaboration of the role of chance in evolution. It is nearly impossible to discuss contemporary evolutionary theory in any depth at all without making reference to at least some concept of “chance” or “randomness.” Many processes are described as chancy, outcomes are characterized as random, and many evolutionary phenomena are thought to be best described by stochastic or probabilistic models. Chance is taken by various authors to be central to the understanding of fitness, genetic drift, macroevolution, mutation, foraging theory, and environmental variation, to take but a few examples. And for each of these notions, there are yet more stories to tell. Each weaves itself into the various branches of evolutionary theory in myriad different ways, with a wide variety of effects on the history and current state of life on Earth. Each is grounded in a particular trajectory in the history of philosophy and the history of biology, and has inspired a variety of responses throughout science and culture. This book endeavors to offer a cross-section of biological, historical, philosophical, and theological approaches to understanding chance in evolutionary theory.Less

Chance in Evolution

Published in print: 2016-10-25

Evolutionary biology since Darwin has seen a dramatic entrenchment and elaboration of the role of chance in evolution. It is nearly impossible to discuss contemporary evolutionary theory in any depth at all without making reference to at least some concept of “chance” or “randomness.” Many processes are described as chancy, outcomes are characterized as random, and many evolutionary phenomena are thought to be best described by stochastic or probabilistic models. Chance is taken by various authors to be central to the understanding of fitness, genetic drift, macroevolution, mutation, foraging theory, and environmental variation, to take but a few examples. And for each of these notions, there are yet more stories to tell. Each weaves itself into the various branches of evolutionary theory in myriad different ways, with a wide variety of effects on the history and current state of life on Earth. Each is grounded in a particular trajectory in the history of philosophy and the history of biology, and has inspired a variety of responses throughout science and culture. This book endeavors to offer a cross-section of biological, historical, philosophical, and theological approaches to understanding chance in evolutionary theory.

If collective remembrance is as old as human communal existence and the age-old practices that forge its cohesion, theoretical preoccupation with the phenomenon of collective memory is relatively ...
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If collective remembrance is as old as human communal existence and the age-old practices that forge its cohesion, theoretical preoccupation with the phenomenon of collective memory is relatively recent. The present book accounts for this paradox through interpretation of the novel function accorded to collective memory which, in a modern context of discontinuity and dislocation, reoccupies the space that has been left vacant by the decline of traditional assumptions concerning human socio-political identity. In this situation, where memory is widely called upon as a source of collective cohesion, this book aims to elaborate a philosophical basis for the concept of collective memory and to delimit its scope in relation to the historical past. Extensive analysis is devoted to the complex modes of symbolic configuration of collective memory in the public sphere. These modes of symbolic configuration have undergone radical transformation over the past century that is both reflected and engendered by the new technologies of mass communication by virtue of their capacity to simulate direct experience and remembrance through the image. Such transformations make increasingly palpable the limited scope of collective memory, rooted in a rapidly changing context, in the face of an historical past beyond its pale. The growing awareness of these limits, however, and of the opacity of the historical past, need not fuel historical skepticism: as the novels of Walter Scott, Marcel Proust and W. J. Sebald serve to illustrate, it may place in evidence subtle nuances of temporal context that are emblematic of historical reality.Less

Collective Memory and the Historical Past

Jeffrey Andrew Barash

Published in print: 2016-11-28

If collective remembrance is as old as human communal existence and the age-old practices that forge its cohesion, theoretical preoccupation with the phenomenon of collective memory is relatively recent. The present book accounts for this paradox through interpretation of the novel function accorded to collective memory which, in a modern context of discontinuity and dislocation, reoccupies the space that has been left vacant by the decline of traditional assumptions concerning human socio-political identity. In this situation, where memory is widely called upon as a source of collective cohesion, this book aims to elaborate a philosophical basis for the concept of collective memory and to delimit its scope in relation to the historical past. Extensive analysis is devoted to the complex modes of symbolic configuration of collective memory in the public sphere. These modes of symbolic configuration have undergone radical transformation over the past century that is both reflected and engendered by the new technologies of mass communication by virtue of their capacity to simulate direct experience and remembrance through the image. Such transformations make increasingly palpable the limited scope of collective memory, rooted in a rapidly changing context, in the face of an historical past beyond its pale. The growing awareness of these limits, however, and of the opacity of the historical past, need not fuel historical skepticism: as the novels of Walter Scott, Marcel Proust and W. J. Sebald serve to illustrate, it may place in evidence subtle nuances of temporal context that are emblematic of historical reality.

The convergence of new technologies for the production, dissemination and analysis of scientific data and new regulatory regimes has provoked a reshuffling of priorities in research practices and ...
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The convergence of new technologies for the production, dissemination and analysis of scientific data and new regulatory regimes has provoked a reshuffling of priorities in research practices and outcomes, with important consequences for what is viewed as scientific knowledge and how that knowledge is obtained, legitimated and used. This book investigates how databases are set up and used to generate biological knowledge, and the practical difficulties and challenges confronted by database curators when attempting to package data for travel. These insights inform debate on four fundamental issues: what counts as knowledge at a time of significant technological and institutional changes; what counts as data, and how this relates to existing conceptions of the role and use of evidence in the life sciences and elsewhere; what does it mean to organize and interpret data to generate new knowledge of living systems; and under what conditions is such a systematization achieved.Less

Data-Centric Biology : A Philosophical Study

Sabina Leonelli

Published in print: 2016-11-21

The convergence of new technologies for the production, dissemination and analysis of scientific data and new regulatory regimes has provoked a reshuffling of priorities in research practices and outcomes, with important consequences for what is viewed as scientific knowledge and how that knowledge is obtained, legitimated and used. This book investigates how databases are set up and used to generate biological knowledge, and the practical difficulties and challenges confronted by database curators when attempting to package data for travel. These insights inform debate on four fundamental issues: what counts as knowledge at a time of significant technological and institutional changes; what counts as data, and how this relates to existing conceptions of the role and use of evidence in the life sciences and elsewhere; what does it mean to organize and interpret data to generate new knowledge of living systems; and under what conditions is such a systematization achieved.

This volume uses phenomenological and hermeneutical tools to look at “distressed bodies” – including the experiences and treatment of sick patients, prisoners, and animals. These groups are ...
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This volume uses phenomenological and hermeneutical tools to look at “distressed bodies” – including the experiences and treatment of sick patients, prisoners, and animals. These groups are challenged both by processes from within (the sick body) and outside (social exclusion and objectification). The book draws on literary examples such as Sophocles’ Philoctetes, the author’s own struggles with chronic pain, and clinical and philosophical sources, to understand the many ways illness can shatter one’s life world. This leads to a critical and visionary re-examination of treatment modalities, such as our fetishized fascination with pills, and potential uses of touch and healing objects/environments in medicine. Along the way, clinical diagnosis and bioethical reflection are also rethought. Real-world predicaments generate “texts” embedded in complex “contexts” which often remain unexamined. For example, organ transplantation as practiced reflects Cartesian and capitalist modes of objectifying the body. Yet lived bodies intertwine from birth to death, and beyond—this can lead to a new ways of understanding and performing organ transplants. Similarly, capitalist and Cartesian models shape our harsh treatment of animal-bodies and prisoners in a way that demands re-vision. The book challenges our contemporary factory farms and penitentiaries. Yet in chapters co-written with prisoners we also see how imprisonment can evoke strategies of resistance and redemption, and even close relations with animals as the two shunned groups assist each other. The book ends with a focus on such human-animal “shape-shifting.” Attending to distressed bodies thus leads to a radical re-envisioning of medical, criminal justice, and environmental practices.Less

The Distressed Body : Rethinking Illness, Imprisonment, and Healing

Drew Leder

Published in print: 2016-10-17

This volume uses phenomenological and hermeneutical tools to look at “distressed bodies” – including the experiences and treatment of sick patients, prisoners, and animals. These groups are challenged both by processes from within (the sick body) and outside (social exclusion and objectification). The book draws on literary examples such as Sophocles’ Philoctetes, the author’s own struggles with chronic pain, and clinical and philosophical sources, to understand the many ways illness can shatter one’s life world. This leads to a critical and visionary re-examination of treatment modalities, such as our fetishized fascination with pills, and potential uses of touch and healing objects/environments in medicine. Along the way, clinical diagnosis and bioethical reflection are also rethought. Real-world predicaments generate “texts” embedded in complex “contexts” which often remain unexamined. For example, organ transplantation as practiced reflects Cartesian and capitalist modes of objectifying the body. Yet lived bodies intertwine from birth to death, and beyond—this can lead to a new ways of understanding and performing organ transplants. Similarly, capitalist and Cartesian models shape our harsh treatment of animal-bodies and prisoners in a way that demands re-vision. The book challenges our contemporary factory farms and penitentiaries. Yet in chapters co-written with prisoners we also see how imprisonment can evoke strategies of resistance and redemption, and even close relations with animals as the two shunned groups assist each other. The book ends with a focus on such human-animal “shape-shifting.” Attending to distressed bodies thus leads to a radical re-envisioning of medical, criminal justice, and environmental practices.

Nietzsche’s Earth articulates the sense of his call to be “true to the earth,” exploring its political dimensions. Triangulating Nietzsche between the nineteenth century European world of competing ...
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Nietzsche’s Earth articulates the sense of his call to be “true to the earth,” exploring its political dimensions. Triangulating Nietzsche between the nineteenth century European world of competing nation states and the changed landscape of more recent times, it argues that this thinker speaks to contemporary themes and questions such as globalization, the so-called end of history, sovereign assumption of emergency powers through states of exception, and the composition of the decisive political body of a diverse, nomadic, and hybrid multitude. The book explores the contrast between two modes of political time: that of the “last humans,” measured out and securitized by debt and insurance, another involving openness to futurity where “philosophers of the future” may vigilantly seize unique opportunities. These discussions put Nietzsche in dialogue with more recent philosophers of the event, including Deleuze, Derrida, Agamben, and Badiou. The study examines Nietzsche’s sketch of a political geoaesthetics of the anthropocene, elucidating Thus Spoke Zarathustra’s celebration of a garden earth. Nietzsche’s Earth concludes by demonstrating that his “philosophy of the Antichrist” should be understood not merely as a challenge to Christian belief but as an immanent critique of traditional political theology, linking the death of God to the fragility of the state. The book constructs a running dialogue between Nietzsche and those thinkers of his time and ours who see the earth through the lenses of a totalizing world-history, on a more or less Hegelian model, involving a hierarchical system of nation-states and an inescapable teleological narrative.Less

Nietzsche's Earth : Great Events, Great Politics

Gary Shapiro

Published in print: 2016-09-09

Nietzsche’s Earth articulates the sense of his call to be “true to the earth,” exploring its political dimensions. Triangulating Nietzsche between the nineteenth century European world of competing nation states and the changed landscape of more recent times, it argues that this thinker speaks to contemporary themes and questions such as globalization, the so-called end of history, sovereign assumption of emergency powers through states of exception, and the composition of the decisive political body of a diverse, nomadic, and hybrid multitude. The book explores the contrast between two modes of political time: that of the “last humans,” measured out and securitized by debt and insurance, another involving openness to futurity where “philosophers of the future” may vigilantly seize unique opportunities. These discussions put Nietzsche in dialogue with more recent philosophers of the event, including Deleuze, Derrida, Agamben, and Badiou. The study examines Nietzsche’s sketch of a political geoaesthetics of the anthropocene, elucidating Thus Spoke Zarathustra’s celebration of a garden earth. Nietzsche’s Earth concludes by demonstrating that his “philosophy of the Antichrist” should be understood not merely as a challenge to Christian belief but as an immanent critique of traditional political theology, linking the death of God to the fragility of the state. The book constructs a running dialogue between Nietzsche and those thinkers of his time and ours who see the earth through the lenses of a totalizing world-history, on a more or less Hegelian model, involving a hierarchical system of nation-states and an inescapable teleological narrative.

Nietzsche's Journey to Sorrento situates the turning point in Nietzsche's philosophy at the moment of his 1876 sabbatical in Sorrento. Nietzsche traveled to Southern Italy, accompanied by his friends ...
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Nietzsche's Journey to Sorrento situates the turning point in Nietzsche's philosophy at the moment of his 1876 sabbatical in Sorrento. Nietzsche traveled to Southern Italy, accompanied by his friends Malwida von Meysenbug and Paul Rée, to recover his health, which was declining in the Northern climate of Basel, where he was a professor of philology. In Sorrento, he underwent a transformative experience that would lead him to renounce his earlier work, highly influenced by the metaphysics of Schopenhauer, and to abandon his professorship at the University of Basel so as to become a true philosopher. Also in Sorrento simultaneously to him was Richard Wagner, previously a figure of towering importance to the philosopher, but who had disappointed him irreparably with the first Bayreuth Festival. It was in Sorrento that Nietzsche saw the composer for the last time and made the definitive decision to forego the metaphysics of the artist, which he had placed so much faith in with The Birth of Tragedy. It is also at this time that he initiated his Philosophy of the Free Spirit, writing the book Things Human, All Too Human. D'Iorio advances the thesis of a continuous development from Nietzsche's early research on the scientific aspects of the pre-Platonic philosophers and this new step in his thinking. The upshot of the overall argument is Nietzsche's new affirmation of life and of all that is human, in the face of the Platonic devaluation of human things, which the philosophical tradition previously tended to support.Less

Nietzsche's Journey to Sorrento : Genesis of the Philosophy of the Free Spirit

Paolo D'Iorio

Published in print: 2016-09-07

Nietzsche's Journey to Sorrento situates the turning point in Nietzsche's philosophy at the moment of his 1876 sabbatical in Sorrento. Nietzsche traveled to Southern Italy, accompanied by his friends Malwida von Meysenbug and Paul Rée, to recover his health, which was declining in the Northern climate of Basel, where he was a professor of philology. In Sorrento, he underwent a transformative experience that would lead him to renounce his earlier work, highly influenced by the metaphysics of Schopenhauer, and to abandon his professorship at the University of Basel so as to become a true philosopher. Also in Sorrento simultaneously to him was Richard Wagner, previously a figure of towering importance to the philosopher, but who had disappointed him irreparably with the first Bayreuth Festival. It was in Sorrento that Nietzsche saw the composer for the last time and made the definitive decision to forego the metaphysics of the artist, which he had placed so much faith in with The Birth of Tragedy. It is also at this time that he initiated his Philosophy of the Free Spirit, writing the book Things Human, All Too Human. D'Iorio advances the thesis of a continuous development from Nietzsche's early research on the scientific aspects of the pre-Platonic philosophers and this new step in his thinking. The upshot of the overall argument is Nietzsche's new affirmation of life and of all that is human, in the face of the Platonic devaluation of human things, which the philosophical tradition previously tended to support.

This book argues that the domestic tumult of the early Cold War favored a “new and improved” philosophical paradigm for America, better adapted to the times than other approaches. Comprised of ...
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This book argues that the domestic tumult of the early Cold War favored a “new and improved” philosophical paradigm for America, better adapted to the times than other approaches. Comprised of heterogeneous elements that mainly shared a mathematical veneer and their adaptability to Cold War political pressures, this “Cold War philosophy” valorized concepts of scientific objectivity and practices of market freedom, while prudently downplaying the anti-theistic implications of modern thought. Enforced by “sticks” from outside the university, encouraged by “carrots” proffered from within, and imposed in California by a draconian vetting system for job candidates, Cold War philosophy rapidly became central to academia. The clearest statement we have of its main themes is Hans Reichenbach’s The Rise of Scientific Philosophy, which this book places into the context of Cold War pressures on American philosophy. The main alternatives to Cold War philosophy, pragmatism and existentialism, were disfavored because their open commitments to atheism were unacceptable to powerful American religious forces; Reichenbach’s naturalism, like that of other logical positivists, was hidden behind long and technical discussions of “reduction.” The positive doctrines of Cold war philosophy were largely shared with rational choice theory; but where such theory was presented as an empirical theory of market and voting behavior, Cold War philosophy presented a theory of the properly functioning human mind everywhere and always, making it what the times required: an effective counter-ideology to global Marxism.Less

The Philosophy Scare : The Politics of Reason in the Early Cold War

John McCumber

Published in print: 2016-09-15

This book argues that the domestic tumult of the early Cold War favored a “new and improved” philosophical paradigm for America, better adapted to the times than other approaches. Comprised of heterogeneous elements that mainly shared a mathematical veneer and their adaptability to Cold War political pressures, this “Cold War philosophy” valorized concepts of scientific objectivity and practices of market freedom, while prudently downplaying the anti-theistic implications of modern thought. Enforced by “sticks” from outside the university, encouraged by “carrots” proffered from within, and imposed in California by a draconian vetting system for job candidates, Cold War philosophy rapidly became central to academia. The clearest statement we have of its main themes is Hans Reichenbach’s The Rise of Scientific Philosophy, which this book places into the context of Cold War pressures on American philosophy. The main alternatives to Cold War philosophy, pragmatism and existentialism, were disfavored because their open commitments to atheism were unacceptable to powerful American religious forces; Reichenbach’s naturalism, like that of other logical positivists, was hidden behind long and technical discussions of “reduction.” The positive doctrines of Cold war philosophy were largely shared with rational choice theory; but where such theory was presented as an empirical theory of market and voting behavior, Cold War philosophy presented a theory of the properly functioning human mind everywhere and always, making it what the times required: an effective counter-ideology to global Marxism.

This study is the first to put together and analyze Plato’s two-part presentation of Protagoras, the most famous sophist of all time. In the Protagoras Plato sets out the sophist’s moral-political ...
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This study is the first to put together and analyze Plato’s two-part presentation of Protagoras, the most famous sophist of all time. In the Protagoras Plato sets out the sophist’s moral-political teaching, and in the Theaetetus we learn of his theoretical doctrine. Protagoras turns out to be a devout atheist contemptuous of all ordinary morality, and he claims on that basis to teach his best students what wisdom is. Going together with this harsh moral-political teaching is a daunting theoretical one, according to which “a human being is the measure of all things.” In Protagoras’ hands this amounts to a radical relativism: how things appear to each really are for each, there being no stable, “objective” world against which to measure our necessarily private perceptions. Plato reveals that Protagoras was led to adopt that relativism in order to respond to the threat or challenge posed by religious piety to the very possibility of philosophy, understood as the way of life guided by autonomous human reason. Socrates too was concerned with that challenge, but in his engagement with Protagoras it becomes clear that he neither denigrated ordinary moral life nor succumbed to the temptation of a radical relativism.Less

Sophistry and Political Philosophy : Protagoras' Challenge to Socrates

Robert C. Bartlett

Published in print: 2016-09-12

This study is the first to put together and analyze Plato’s two-part presentation of Protagoras, the most famous sophist of all time. In the Protagoras Plato sets out the sophist’s moral-political teaching, and in the Theaetetus we learn of his theoretical doctrine. Protagoras turns out to be a devout atheist contemptuous of all ordinary morality, and he claims on that basis to teach his best students what wisdom is. Going together with this harsh moral-political teaching is a daunting theoretical one, according to which “a human being is the measure of all things.” In Protagoras’ hands this amounts to a radical relativism: how things appear to each really are for each, there being no stable, “objective” world against which to measure our necessarily private perceptions. Plato reveals that Protagoras was led to adopt that relativism in order to respond to the threat or challenge posed by religious piety to the very possibility of philosophy, understood as the way of life guided by autonomous human reason. Socrates too was concerned with that challenge, but in his engagement with Protagoras it becomes clear that he neither denigrated ordinary moral life nor succumbed to the temptation of a radical relativism.

The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead brings together a range of scholars who provide detailed analyses of Mead’s importance to innovative fields of scholarship, including cognitive science, ...
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The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead brings together a range of scholars who provide detailed analyses of Mead’s importance to innovative fields of scholarship, including cognitive science, environmental studies, democratic epistemology, social ethics, non-teleological historiography, and the history of the natural and social sciences. The volume is divided into three main areas in which Mead’s thinking has inspired contemporary work. The first is the area of history, historiography, and historical sociology. The second follows from one of the fundamental reorientations of intellectual and political life in recent decades: the turn to a greater awareness of environmental problems, both in an empirical and in a normative sense, and the rethinking of earlier assumptions about “man and nature” in light of this turn. And the third has to do with the outburst of new research in neurobiology, brain studies, and evolutionary psychology. Edited and introduced by Hans Joas and Daniel R. Huebner, the volume as a whole makes a coherent statement that places Mead in dialogue with current research, pushing these domains of scholarship forward while also revitalizing the growing literature on an author who has an ongoing and major influence on sociology, psychology, and philosophy.Less

The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead

Published in print: 2016-10-17

The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead brings together a range of scholars who provide detailed analyses of Mead’s importance to innovative fields of scholarship, including cognitive science, environmental studies, democratic epistemology, social ethics, non-teleological historiography, and the history of the natural and social sciences. The volume is divided into three main areas in which Mead’s thinking has inspired contemporary work. The first is the area of history, historiography, and historical sociology. The second follows from one of the fundamental reorientations of intellectual and political life in recent decades: the turn to a greater awareness of environmental problems, both in an empirical and in a normative sense, and the rethinking of earlier assumptions about “man and nature” in light of this turn. And the third has to do with the outburst of new research in neurobiology, brain studies, and evolutionary psychology. Edited and introduced by Hans Joas and Daniel R. Huebner, the volume as a whole makes a coherent statement that places Mead in dialogue with current research, pushing these domains of scholarship forward while also revitalizing the growing literature on an author who has an ongoing and major influence on sociology, psychology, and philosophy.

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